The British ceremony organized for the 80e anniversary of the Landings began without Emmanuel Macron, Thursday June 6. The clock master arrived fifteen minutes late at the British Memorial at Ver-sur-Mer (Calvados). The protocol did not wait for the arrival of the presidential couple, so the ceremony began at 10:30 a.m., as planned: the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, gave the welcoming speech to the veterans, then King Charles III and Queen Camilla, inviting powers, entered the site, alone. The late couple appeared in the middle of the ceremony, welcomed by the Prime Minister.
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No applause to greet the arrival of the President of the Republic, nor effusions between the two couples. The British hardly appreciated the casualness of the head of state. “How can the French president be fifteen minutes late for a major international event in France? »Adam Parsons, a journalist on Sky News, a 24-hour news channel based in London, said indignantly on the social network
We had already come close to a diplomatic incident, on June 6, 2014, for the 70th anniversary of the Landing: Queen Elizabeth II had to wait for twenty minutes in the official car before being able to leave the castle of Bénouville (Calvados), where the event took place the lunch of heads of state invited by the President of the Republic François Hollande, because the limousine of American President Barack Obama was too wide to exit through the gates. “The British in general, and crowned heads in particular, are morbidly punctual », Testifies the journalist and essayist Marc Roche.
Test for veterans
The fifteen minutes lost at the British Memorial not only were not made up, but they became thirty minutes at the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer (Calvados), 30 kilometers away, where the ceremony was to begin at 12:30 p.m. American. Joe and Jill Biden waited stoically for the arrival of the Macrons to open the ceremony. A test for the veterans, who had to be moved so as not to suffer sunstroke while waiting.
At the start of the afternoon, the President of the Republic set his record straight. He was present in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer (Calvados) at 3:30 p.m., as planned in the program, to welcome the fifteen heads of state and government and their spouses invited by France for the international ceremony.
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